Knowledge's Blog

Google’s upcoming Tuesday press conference is likely to mark the debut of the Nexus One, the search company’s own Android-based smartphone.

Nexus One should showcase the latest generation of the Linux-based open source Android operating system. It’s also the first phone that is expected to be directly marketed by Google, setting higher expectations for the phone.

Here’s what we know about the phone so far.

Hardware

The Nexus One was designed by HTC, which has a close relationship with Google. HTC created the first Android phone, the T-Mobile G1, and has released at least five Android handsets since the operating system launched in October 2008.

Though packed in a big, white box with the Google logo printed prominently, the Nexus One clearly shows the stamp of HTC’s design sensibilities. Photos show a device similar to the HTC Droid Eris phone with its trackball and four buttons at the bottom of the phone.

The Nexus One has a 1-GHz Snapdragon CPU, a 3.7-inch 480 x 800 display, 512 MB of of RAM and an expandable 4-GB microSD card, says Engadget. The 1-GHz processor alone should make the Nexus one of the fastest smartphones available currently.

By contrast, the Palm Pre has a 600-MHz Texas Instruments OMAP3430 processor and the Motorola Droid runs a 550-MHz Arm Cortex A8 processor. Click here to read more.. »

Perhaps Apple is getting ahead of itself. Even as the company plans to announce its “latest creation” on Jan. 27, one of its last creation’s key features — the ability for special-purpose accessories to communicate with iPhone apps — remains largely unused.

Integration between hardware accessories and iPhone apps was one of the standout new features of iPhone OS 3.0. By enabling iPhone apps to communicate with accessories over Bluetooth or through the dock connector, manufacturers and developers could augment the iPhone’s powers. Wired liked the idea so much we even coined an admittedly awkward term, dongleware, to describe these hybrids. And you, our readers, came up with some great suggestions for iPhone hardware/software add-ons.

With the addition of an accessory, the iPhone could potentially transform into a versatile electric guitar pedal (which was actually demonstrated at an Apple event by Line 6 and still hasn’t seen the light of day) or maybe even a light-switch controller. Game developers could ship special joysticks for their games. At Apple’s press event in March 2009 we even saw a special accessory that turned the iPhone into an insulin meter for diabetes patients to monitor their glucose levels. Click here to read more.. »

A weekend meeting of technology pros looking to help victims of the Haiti earthquake yielded some ready-to-roll projects and a few more nearing completion.

Perhaps more important, participants say, the gathering produced a framework that could keep aiding disaster-relief efforts in the months and years to come.

CrisisCamp Haiti brought together developers, programmers and other volunteers for meetings in Washington, Los Angeles, California, and other cities.

Results included a digital map to help relief groups in Haiti coordinate their efforts and applications for the iPhone and other smartphones, including a Creole-to-English dictionary.

“There was virtually no moving around,” said Noel Dickover, a CrisisCamp co-founder and one of more than 200 people who attended the session in Washington. “Everyone was sitting there working and really getting stuff done for the entire time.”

Dickover said an open-source, interactive map that the group worked on already is being used by relief organizations working in Haiti to help coordinate their efforts. Click here to read more.. »

All browsers greedily suck up processor and RAM resources, slowing and even stalling PCs — but you can help put an end to your browser’s piggish ways.

Planned job cuts at tech companies rose in 2009 for the second straight year, hitting the highest level in four years, according to a report released Tuesday.

Outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas Inc. reported that tech sector employers announced 174,629 job cuts in 2009. That’s a 12.3% increase from cuts announced in 2008, and the highest total since 2005.

“The recession’s impact on the tech sector was inescapable,” said chief executive John Challenger in a prepared statement. “Even with the economy showing some nascent signs of recovery … many companies are holding off on investments in new technology.”

Electronics companies fared the worst, with 65,300 cuts announced. Computer employers were next with 65,261 planned job eliminations, and telecom had 44,068 planned cuts.

The nearly 175,000 total tech cuts comprised 13.2% of the 1.3 million jobs lost across all industries in 2009. That’s up slightly from 12.7% in 2008.

The year was top-heavy for tech job losses, as more than 84,000 were unleashed in just the first quarter of 2009. On Jan. 30 alone, more than 65,000 job cuts were announced — including Sprint Nextel (S, Fortune 500) and Texas Instruments (TXN, Fortune 500). Also in January, Microsoft (MSFT, Fortune 500) said it planned to cut 5,000 jobs.

But by the fourth quarter, tech cuts tapered to just under 34,000. The report said the rapid decline in cuts over the year could signal a 2010 turnaround.

“It’s going to be a slow climb,” Challenger said. “Computer and electronics firms should be among the first to see the turnaround, as companies try to postpone hiring by achieving productivity gains through technology.”

A push for electronic health records should boost spending and jobs in the tech sector, the report said, citing data showing that about 44% of physicians use electronic records but only 7% consider the systems fully functional. That means IT professionals will be needed.

But the sector still faces challenges. The credit crunch has slammed tech firms, the report said, because the companies are having trouble finding new buyers. Fewer businesses have the cash or credit to expand their technology spending.

Earlier this month, in another sign of continued weakness, the government confirmed that nation’s unemployment rate remained at 10% in December. The Labor Department said the country lost 85,000 jobs that month.

Some of tech’s biggest battle lines may soon be shifting. Apple is in talks to make Bing the iPhone’s default search engine, according to a report published in BusinessWeek today. Microsoft’s search would replace the iPhone’s current default — yep, you guessed it — Google.

The story, which cites the always-popular “people familiar with the matter” for its information, says talks between Microsoft and Apple have been underway for weeks. If true, it could mark a monumental shift in one of tech’s most relentless wars.

Apple and Google: A Changing Story

Let’s start by setting the stage: Google and Apple, you see, used to be pals. They played nicely together, with Google holding valuable spots as the default search provider for both the iPhone and Apple’s PC-based Safari browser. The real rivalry, of course, was always between Apple and Microsoft — just look to the ads if you need any proof.

It wasn’t until Google began testing the waters of mobile development that the tides began to turn. With the open-source Android platform, the plethora of Google-supported anti-iPhones, and that one Google-sold super-duper-phone, the G-Force suddenly stopped looking so sympathetic to Apple’s interests.

Throw in the spats over mobile apps (e.g. Apple saying “We don’t want Google Voice or Google Latitude for vague reasons that don’t quite make sense”) and the rumored native maps app coming to iPhone 4, and our former buddies suddenly don’t seem so chummy. Click here to read more.. »

Don’t you hate the smudges you get on your phone, or iPod whenever you touch the screen? Would you pay $100,000 to make them go away? HP thinks you might, if you’re a large company or organization. That’s why they’ve created the Wall of Touch, a gigantic wall of advanced touch screens –9 of them, to be exact, each one 43 inches across, with 1080p resolution.

Put together, all these screens create essentially a large, touch-operated computer that will let you do everything from read news to watch videos and video chat, all in enormous fashion.

What’s unique about HP’s approach, though, is that you don’t even have to touch the screen to make it work. Instead of the screen requiring a press to activate an action, the wall uses optical cameras and a magnetic strip to determine when there’s a user nearby, and then responds to gestures made near the screen rather than simple presses, according to the Wall Street Journal.

For now, the product is mostly limited to big corporations, thanks to the $100,000 price tag. The NBA, Edelman PR, and Continental Airlines are among the first customers for the Wall of Touch. HP’s plan is to market devices like this of various sizes, from a smaller screen that is more suitable to consumers, to larger screens like the prototype for businesses. The wall will likely be available to consumers in 2011, said Philip McKinney, a VP at HP.

There are a number of cool possibilities for technology like this. Since users don’t have to touch the screen to make it work, museums and companies could both use the wall to let people see their products and interact with them. The video conferencing potential is exciting on the wall as well, and the touch-screen technologies allow for quick browsing, reading, and consuming of everything from Hulu to Twitter.

Hewlett Packard, reigning inkjet giant, has partnered with Stratasys, a leading manufacturer of rapid prototyping machines, to bring 3D “printing” of solid objects to the desktop.The HP-Stratasys models have been described as small enough to sit on a desktop, quiet enough to use in an office, and priced under $15,000.

Currently, Stratasys’ most popular offerings under the Dimension brand, the “SST” series, are priced closer to $30,000, and are roughly the size of a small refrigerator.

The push by HP-Stratasys to market an entry-level desktop rapid prototyping platform may have been spurred by a series of successful DIY projects; Most notable among them the “RepRap” and “MakerBot Cupcake“, both of which sell as kits for under $1,000.

Like the RepRap and Cupcake, the HP-Stratasys platform will operate using ABS plastic material. It’s likely that the HP-Stratasys machine will, at least initially, be more like the additive approach used by Stratasys’ Dimension line and the Reprap, not the CNC-style of the MakerBot Cupcake machine.

Since the initial release of Stratasys’ rapid prototyping platforms, the software used to create the STL files required to generate a three-dimensional print has dropped significantly in price commercially, and been released free and open source by the Blender project.

Assuming HP-Stratasys can continue to lower the price of their desktop-style rapid prototyping machines, it may not be long until we’re printing our own household items as-needed, and one step closer to a Star Trek-style replicator.

NEW YORK – The New York Times says it will charge readers for full access to its Web site starting in 2011, a risky move aimed at increasing online revenue without driving away advertisers that want the biggest possible audience.

The potential pitfalls have made most other major newspapers hesitant to take a similar step. But after months of deliberation, the Times said Wednesday that it will use a metered system, allowing free access to a certain number of articles each month and then charging users for additional content.

The Times did not disclose how many articles would be available for free each month or what it would charge to read more. Subscribers to the printed version of the Times would still have free access to the Web site.

It would not be the first time the newspaper has asked readers to pay for its online articles.

It charged for its Web site in 1996 but attracted only about 4,000 subscribers. Another experiment called Times Select, which required a $50 annual subscription to read Times columnists, drew 221,000 customers but was scrapped in 2007 because it dented ad sales. Advertisers generally pay more for higher Web traffic. Click here to read more.. »

And you thought the iPhone only played touchy-touch puzzle games. False.

Grand Theft Auto, one of the biggest franchises in videogames, touched down on the App Store this week, and brought its special brand of mayhem and manslaughter with it. A port of the PlayStation Portable edition of Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars (which was in turn a port of a Nintendo DS game), the iPhone version is a phenomenal play despite a handful of interface issues.

You are Huang Lee, the spoiled son of a Triad ganglord. After your father was murdered, you must deliver an ancient sword to your uncle so as to keep the empire in your family’s name. Ambushed at the Liberty City airport and left to die, you now find yourself drawn into the underworld with thoughts of vengeance. But what starts out as a simple revenge tale grows in scope, with a criminal world about to explode as gangs (and cops) square off for control. The Chinatown Wars narrative is strong, full of both humor and real drama, and benefits from excellent writing.

Instead of a 3D behind-the-shoulder view, Chinatown Wars returns to the top-down roots of the pre-PlayStation 2 GTA games. The art style is cartoonish and looks fantastic. The camera gives you a good view of the city around you, although when you start zipping through traffic trying to escape cops on a motorcycle you can almost get too far ahead of yourself. There is an option called Vehicle Camera Look Ahead that I recommend you try. You get a little extra real estate in the frame when driving, but sometimes it doesn’t feel like enough. However, pulling back the camera any more would rob the game of its rich detail (Liberty City lives and breathes with tons of pedestrians, buildings, and logical traffic patterns,) but it is often too easy to slam your car into a wall or an oncoming car. Click here to read more.. »